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Social media is big and continues to grow and evolve. According to Fast Company, 93% of marketers use social media to promote their business and reach their business goals. Converting followers into paying customers is the ultimate goal of every business. To achieve that goal, you need to have a good social media strategy in place. If you manage your business’ social media marketing, read on.

Here are some tactics you can implement to help you get started on improving your social media strategy.

Choose your Image Wisely

Visual is king in digital marketing. Thanks to the availability of camera phones and social networks emphasizing visual elements, the ease of taking and uploading photos has increased dramatically.

Marketers who use visual content get more followers, more leads and more customer engagement. But to get that attention, you need to connect with the person on the other side of the screen. Choose images that appeal to your target audience, but make sure that it also fits your brand’s voice, style and mood.

In today’s mobile-driven world, producing content on a regular basis is a must in order to maintain a strong online presence. But with so many creative minds joining the social media sphere and great blogs emerging on almost a daily basis, capturing the attention of your target audience has become extremely difficult.

How do you cut through the noise and stand out in the online world? Visual content can help. Don’t believe us? Studies show that content with relevant images get 94% more views, likes and comments as compared to those without.

How to Create Awesome Visual Content for Social Media

Customize stock photos

Stock photos have been tremendously helpful for those who don’t have a sizeable design budget and those who need them fast. But in order to stay with your brand and visual identity guidelines, it is important that you customize these photos. Plus, you wouldn’t want your audience to see the exact same photo in other sites, right? Tweak and customize stock photos to make them your own.

Use online editing tools

Creating visual content can be challenging. The good news is that you don’t have to be an expert in photo editing to create great images. There are several online editing tools like Canva, Picmonkey and RelayThat that can help you create stunning visual content that looks like it came from a professional graphic designer.

Add a call-to-action

Ideally, great visual content should eye-catching and entice people to take action. Now that you have successfully captured people’s attention, let them know what you want them to do. Do you want them to share, like or comment on your post? Or do you want them to click through your content? You can either add a call-to-action on the image, in the description or both.

Be consistent

Colors can help make your visual content pop. It can help you capture the attention of your target audience and provide amazing results. But it is also important to stay consistent with the type of visual element you use like colors.

Choose 2 to 4 colors and stick to them when creating visual content. Use it in your logo, texts, images etc. Remember, having a consistent color palette is a must.

Focus on Platforms Where Your Customers Are

In order to build an online presence, you first need to define your business’ personality. Ask yourself how you want people to envision you. Also, define a consistent brand voice to drive consistency in your content creation efforts. Even if people view your content on different channels, you want to make sure that they could identify the content as coming from your brand.

When you are defining your brand, pay close attention to the types of people you hope to attract. Where are you going to find them?

Just like everyone else, most small business owners are pressured to have a presence on every social media platform. The problem is that a hot, new social media tool hits the scene almost every few months, making it extremely difficult to manage all those social accounts.

To make the most out of your social media marketing efforts, you need to focus on platforms where your customers are. Fish where the fishes are. Don’t waste your time, energy and resources fishing in an empty pond.

It is okay to not have an account on every social media channel.

In fact, we recommend only focusing your attention on the one of two networks that your tribe is using. Master these and then, if you wish, you can begin using and focusing on additional networks. My strategy if you don’t have a team to back you up is to choose one social media network and stick to it. Really focus your efforts on growing engagement, your network, and traffic to your site.

A lot of business owners feel like they need to do EVERYTHING, but this can get overwhelming quickly. It can turn your best intentions into a quick hatred of all things social media.

By choosing one network and mastering that, you can always expand later.

So how do you choose which network to grow? Think about where your target market hangs out. B2B businesses often choose LinkedIn, but Pinterest could also be a great avenue for growing your online traffic.

Having huge networks is great, but you also want to make sure they are made of the right type of people who will potentially buy from you in the future. Focusing on one network can help you see these results more quickly.

Get the Attention of Influencers

An influencer is someone who carries influence over others. In the new world of digital relationships, people are receptive of recommendations from people they trust and respect. In fact, one study revealed that 40% of consumers had made a purchase because of an influencer’s recommendation; while 49% seek purchase guidance from an influencer.

One of the easiest ways to get an influencer’s attention is to share their content. Go ahead and share those contents without asking anything in return. Link out shamelessly and unceasingly. When you do, they are likely to take notice.

Another great way to capture the attention of influencers is through guest blogging.

Guest blogging is where you partner with another website and write an article specifically to publish on their blog. This tactic is an incredible way to increase your exposure to a new network of individuals. In order to leverage each guest blog post, however, you need to give readers a reason to head on back to your website. This is where the content upgrade comes in.

A content upgrade is a downloadable resource from your website that complements your guest post article. This could be a checklist, eBook, PDF, template, or whitepaper/case study. The important thing is to capture the individuals name and email address when you offer them their freebie.

Our strategy is to link your by-line or author bio in your guest blog post to a landing page on your website that discusses the content upgrade and includes a form to capture their name and email address.

What Tools Can You Use to Manage Your Social Media

Aside from your website, social media provides an effective way to increase your web presence. It provides a way to generate PR for your company, build your brand and drive traffic to your website. You need to be active on social media if you are serious about achieving these goals. After all, you can’t expect any results if your page is inactive. The problem is that, social media marketing takes time.

If you are a business owner, you can’t afford to spend all day hopping from network to network, managing your social media accounts, planning future posts and checking analytics.

Are you looking for a better way to manage your social media posts?

Here are 4 social media tools to add to your arsenal.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is one of the most robust social media management tools around, and social media managers swear by it. The tool has a feature called Autoschedule. If you have multiple accounts, you can use this feature to manage your posts and make sure that they don’t appear on different channels all at the same time. It also shares your updates at the best possible time of the day to give them the greatest chance of being seen. Hootsuite also allows you to monitor and analyze your performance on your main social networks.

Buffer

Buffer allows you to easily distribute your content across multiple accounts. Just drop your updates to your Buffer queue and you don’t have to worry about when it will be posted. These posts will be posted for you well spaced out throughout the day.

Buffer also allows users to schedule up to 10 updates at once. The paid version, on the other hand, allows unlimited scheduling.

SocialOomph

Twitter has become one of the must-have marketing channels for any business. If you are interested in automating your Twitter marketing, SocialOomph is the best tool for you. It has a feature called Twitter unlimited, which allows you to manage your Twitter followers and direct messages box from within the app. The free level also allows you to work on up to 5 Twitter accounts. It helps you track keywords and schedule tweets.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social allows you to manage all your relationships, interactions and customer support from a single dashboard. This tool also analyzes your audience to determine the optimal times to deliver content. Because it’s not free, this is recommended for larger businesses that are looking for an all-in-one solution to manage their social media presence.

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Welcome to the BIMS Team community! We are so excited that you’re checking out our site and resources. Our goal is to help you and your business succeed through digital marketing! Whether you are an established business, blogger, or entrepreneur, we know you’ll find information you need to get to the next level!